During this conversation, David and Martin talk about a holistic approach to education and how these ideas can be integrated into cooperative farm life and farm living, and the work of Hawthorne Valley Association over now 50 years to create an integrated learning campus that has brought agricultural experiences and education to 10s of thousands of children with the goal to educate the whole child and raise up full human beings.

Links
Hawthorne Valley Association
Earth in Mind by David Orr

Interviews with Fred Kirschenmann
Farming for Future Generations
Planning for Future Generations  

Bones to Bloom Online Ecological Design Course

Mark doesn’t have a website, but if you’d like to get in touch with him, send me an email and I can connect you.

If you’d like to find out more about Holacracy and Self-Management, I’ve included a number of resources in the show notes to explore this further.

Listening to this conversation, because of the political theory I’ve been steeped in over the years, Holacracy reminds me of the work of communalists and mutualists and people like Murray Bookchin to flatten hierarchies and create collaborative environments to create change. That we can come together around a problem or idea and create a dynamic structure with guiding rules and principles that get us from an idea to a goal. But, that’s just my initial read on this. Have you worked with holacracy or self-management in your business or personal practices? Do you have some specific resources that you would recommend? Let me know.

Until the next time, spend each day taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

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RESOURCES
Holacracy
Holacracy: A Radical New Approach to Management (TEDx Talk)
Brave New Work
Reinventing Organizations
Crowdocracy (The Evolution of Democracy)
Article: What is the Integral Approach?
Book: The Integral Vision by Ken Wilbur (Goodreads)
Book: Gettings Things Done by David Allen (Goodreads)
Book: The Next Revolution by Murray Bookchin (Goodreads)

What new stories do each of us have to craft and tell to create personal and societal transformation?

Those questions, and others, lead me to this place of reflection, reskilling, and planning the future of podcast.

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Utopia: a permaculture vision

At the moment I have some ideas of what the show may look like when I return from this break, but am not setting anything in stone for now. Instead I want to focus on taking this time to come back with clear thoughts and intentions. I also don’t know how long this sabbatical will last. I want to take at least three months away, though others have suggested taking a year to work on this.

With that said, however, I’m still going to be around sharing resources to further permaculture journeys. That includes the podcast Patreon community, where I share weekly updates about what’s going on with the show, as well as what I’m reading and listening to. There is also a monthly Ask Me Anything thread, Patreon discounts on consultation and meandering sessions, and access to a Patreon Discord server. I also host live streams there twice a month to talk about recent events behind the scenes and whatever comes up in our chat.

You can find all of that at: patreon.com/permaculturepodcast

I’m also live streaming on YouTube a few times a month and continue to post on Twitter and Instagram.

Find me on Social Media:
YouTube
Twitter
Instagram

For people who would like to work one-on-one regarding their permaculture project or to discuss their personal permaculture path, I also have regular consultation and meandering sessions available during this break from the show. You’ll find more information about those via the links and can sign up for the podcast newsletter, where I’ll be sharing information about classes and workshops, at thepermaculturepodcast.com.

Finally, I’m here if there is anything I can help you with. Send me a message at: The Permaculture Podcast

I don’t know where this break from the podcast will take me, but I’m looking forward to having you join me on this experience, in whatever way fits your journey. Find me somewhere in the world and until we meet again, spend each day taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

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Starting with farms like VerdEnergia and surrounding neighbors, and the protection and investment of Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management, the umbrella of Rewild Organics provides cooperative ownership and collaboration for farmers, farm partners, and suppliers along the way. As these organizations put the final pieces in place to this logistical network, they’re bringing the first line of turmeric products to the marketplace in cooperation with farmers in the United States, continuing the spirit of partnership and collaboration.

As Joshua and I try to release an update on this process every year or so, and continue the conversation off-air throughout that time, we begin our discussion with a formal introduction to Rewild Organics and then slip into a more casual talk about how this integrated, equitable, and regenerative vision is coming to fruition after nearly 15 years in the making.

Find out more about the team and products from Rewild Organics at rewildorganics.org. 

Other organizations from Joshua and the team:
Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management
VerdEnergia Pacifica

Other Interviews with Joshua:
Scaling up Blacksheep
Permaculture Politics and a Regenerative Future
Transitional Ethics 

From here, the next episode is the end of the year wrap-up, with more information about my upcoming sabbatical.

Until the next time, spend each day supporting the people and products you believe in while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

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Serenbe is a model community located half an hour south of Atlanta, Georgia. Bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders, Steve and the others instrumental in this project created a suburban town based around conservation, preservation, and nature connection.

During our conversation today, Steve shares his vision of what one model of sustainable suburbs can look like. This includes the actions, policies, and practices necessary to pull it off.

Find out more about Steve Nygren and Serenbe at serenbe.com and the podcast, Serenbe Stories at serenbestories.com.

As I prepare for the end of the year and consider the direction of The Permaculture Podcast in 2021, I’ve been reviewing and typing up my notes from the last ten years of classes, workshops, and interviews. While working on this, one of the recurring themes from my teacher training was that permaculture education should focus on how rather than what. In this way, we look at a  site, design, or solution holistically from the top-down, rather than in a mechanistic one-size-fits-all reductionist fashion.

This was on my mind while editing this episode and that what Serenbe offers is a model that reveals the ways, as Steve shared with us, we can adapt the methods of this project to bring something similar and wholly unique into the world. By looking at what exists, we have a concrete guide to what is possible. So when we engage to preserve or create more green space where we live, we can point to places like Serenbe. We can advocate for transfer development rights to increase, rather than decrease, housing density and the work done in Montgomery County, Maryland or Boulder, Colorado, and discuss whether the holistic or patchwork results of one versus would work best in our community. If we live in an area without a lot of places that allow us to connect to nature, we can work with organizations like The Rodale Institute or Children and Nature Network to adapt our specific place and situation to create a more bountiful, verdant, and integrated world.

In time, what we do today can be an example for others in the years ahead.

But, those are just my thoughts at the moment. What are yours?

Leave a comment below or email: The Permaculture Podcast

From here there are only two episodes left in the year. Next up is a conversation with Joshua Hughes to check-in about his work with Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management and the recently launched RewildOrganics. From there is the final episode of 2020, a look at the future of The Permaculture Podcast.

If you’d like to join in the conversation, including The Permaculture Podcast discord, join the community at patreon.com/permaculturepodcast.

Until the next time, spend each day creating community while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Resources
White House Council on the Environment
Biophilic Design (Wiki)
Urban Land Institute
Transfer Development Rights (ConservationTools.org)
Live Works
Nygren Placemaking
The Rodale Institute
Richard Louv - Last Child in the Woods - Children and Nature Network
Wholesome Wave Georgia
Biophilic Institute

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To discuss how to manifest motivational longing in our lives is my guest, Bonita Ford, author of Embers of Hope, a meditative journal meets memoir. Bonita guides us through her feelings of loss of friends and family. The sorrow she feels over the state of the world and encompassing climate chaos. How these feelings can catalyze us to seek out what truly matters as inspiration rather than desperation. Through all of this, we share how we’re navigating the tension between our grief in the moment and the hope we hold for the future.

Find out more about Bonita’s work and the book Embers of Hope at EmbersOfHopeBook.com

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When you find yourself in a moment of grief, how do you foster hope? Let me know.

Leave a comment in the show notes, or get in touch:

The Permaculture Podcast

Until the next time, spend each day holding space for your feelings, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

Schedule a Consultation
Schedule a Meandering

Resources
Embers of Hope
Drawdown-  Paul Hawken
Drawdown Solutions
Joanna Macy - The Great Turning
A Paradise Built in Hell - Rebecca Solnit

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As permaculture practitioners, is there something we can do in our designs and processes on small spaces to decrease our reliance on commercial food sources while using the byproducts of raising fish to grow other crops?

To help us explore this question, Jonathan Martinetto joins me today to share his work helping people create viable home and backyard aquatic ecosystems. These systems, whether a countertop tank or outdoor pond, allow us to grow fish and food, while caring for our environment and community, using aquaponics.

In this introductory conversEmation, Jonathan shares some of the basics to consider when putting together a system, including minimum yield, some of the species appropriate for his environment in Melbourne, Australia, and resources to learn the basics before setting up your own system.

You can Jonathan's aquaponics work at Melbournequaponics.com.au and his free, online course at aquaponicsrevolution.com.

As permaculture practitioners, we need to have as many tools that are appropriate to our needs in our toolkit as possible in order to find the right solutions. All the solutions to our problems are out there, but it’s a matter of knowing about the options in order to be able to implement them, so conversations like this with Jonathan to introduce aquaponics, or the recent episode with Matt Arthur to talk about bokashi, expand on what we can bring to bear to solve out design, systemic, or community problems.

With that need to know in mind, are there any subjects that you would like to hear an introduction to in the future? If so, send me an email and let me know that topic and any people or resources I should consider.

Email me: The Permaculture Podcast

The Patreon bonus episode to accompany this release is out on Friday, November 13.

Until the next time, spend each day building and restoring ecosystems, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

More regular and localized are man-made and natural disasters. Though not a comprehensive list, arising from society, those problems may be a hazardous material spill, power disruption, nuclear radiation leak, chemical or biological threat, communication blackout, and civil unrest. While the natural cycles of the world, compounded by human decisions and climate change, include earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, extreme heat, winter storms, wildfires, and flooding.

As permaculture practitioners, understanding the nature of a given disaster we can prepare and plan for these disruptions so we can respond proactively based on emerging news or local conditions. From that information and our landscape and life designs, we can provide comfort for ourselves and mutual aid within our community. 

In my own life, living in a rural location for more than a decade, I would often spend two or three weeks, spread across the year, cutoff from the world and supplies due to flooding or severe winter snowstorms. In those times my family learned to keep extra food 

But, those problems arose from living in a wet, temperate area prone to flash floods, the impact of hurricanes, and long cold winters. Something I’m not familiar with, that many people around the world face, are wildfires. Whether from lightning strikes, volcanic eruptions, arson, or gender reveal parties, wildfires threaten tens of millions of acres of land and hundreds of millions of people worldwide each year. So today, I’m joined by Matt Fidler, one of the producers behind California Burning, a five-part National Public Radio series examining wildfires in California. 

He joins me today to share what he learned through his interviews with land managers, architects, and others, to understand the ecological role of fire, how misguided land management practices make the problem worse, and the ways climate change will continue to create drier, more fire-prone areas across the globe. He then shares solutions we can take to mitigate these problems through personal action, better neighborhood and building design, and advocacy for improved resource regulations.

Find out more about wildfires and what Matt learned through his podcast, California Burning, at californiaburning.net.

For Patreon supporters, I’ve released a bonus episode with additional resources on wildfires, the ecology of fire, and land management. You can get that, the weekly updates, a discount on consultations and meanderings, and join in the monthly Ask Me Anything thread at Patreon.com/permaculturepodcast.

Also, through the end of the year, to anyone who donates $50 to the show, I’ll send you a USB drive with the first ten years of the show from October 2010 to October 2020.

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As permaculture practitioners, the principles set forth by David Holmgren and beautifully detailed at permacultureprinciples.com, implore us to Use and Value Renewable Resources, to Catch and Store Energy, and Produce No Waste.

These principles lead us to a strategy to refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. In the context of the food system, we refuse to create additional waste by not buying food we won’t eat or use. We reduce our waste by saving and eating leftovers from our table, taking any unfinished portions home from a restaurant, or donating excess canned goods to a food pantry.

We reuse our food by taking ingredients from one dish, such as leftover rice, and turning it into something new, like fried rice or rice pudding. As things can easily go awry in the kitchen, we can learn to save dishes that at first seem over seasoned, too spicy, too thick, or too thin.

After all of this, if we do have food that needs to go into the bin, we can recycle what remains. If we have a homestead, that could include feeding the waste to our animals or placing it in our compost pile. A compost pile, however, requires space, maintenance, and additional materials that may not be available to everyone. This is especially true for those of us living in smaller or urban spaces.

With these concerns in mind, I’m joined today by Matt Arthur of BLH Farm to introduce us to Bokashi, a form of anaerobic composting that destroys human pathogens, preserves nutrients and biomass, and which we can use to increase soil fertility and health. Bokashi is also inexpensive to implement and can be used whether you live in an apartment, on a homestead, or a farm.

You can find out more about Matt, Bokashi, and the farm at BLHFarm.com.

If have some land and are looking to create a niche business in composting, you’ll find some details about how Matt and his family make this work on the website, along with a store to purchase supplies to help you get started.

As I mentioned during the interview, I’m always looking for ways to simplify the process of reducing waste. From what Matt shared with us today, it sounds like bokashi was designed specifically for the needs of urban and suburban households. This allows us to keep those nutrients in our local environment, and limit the export of useful materials away from where we are to a nebulous somewhere elsewhere we don’t have to think about it.

Just as learning to cook with whole ingredients provides us a greater connection to the food we eat and the life that produced our meat or vegetables, processing food waste in and around our home allows us to have an intimate understanding of what we make, what we use, and what we throw away. As we deepen our knowledge, we can rely on biology rather than technology, capture more nutrients, and increase our yields.

But, those are just my thoughts in the moments. If you have a different lesson or would like to share your own experiences with bokashi or another form of composting, let me know.

Leave a comment in the show notes, or get in touch by sending me an email: The Permaculture Podcast

For Patreon supporters, I’ve released a short bonus podcast with additional thoughts and information related to this episode, including more details about reducing food waste, composting, and Bokashi. You can join the Patreon community and listen to that episode, as well as check out the weekly updates, and join in the monthly AMA, at patreon.com/permaculturepodcast.

The winners for the giveaway for a copy of Shawn Klassen-Koop’s Building a Better World in Your Backyard are Lauren Ames, Brad Harris, Nicole Heinaman, and Danielle Parsons. The winner for Nigel Palmer’s The Regenerative Growers Guide to Garden Amendments is Catherine Lightfoot.

Thank you to everyone who entered this giveaway, and a reminder that I still have copies of The 2021 Permaculture Calendar and 470 by Linda Windrow to giveaway. Send me an email with the subject 2021 Calendar or 470 in order to enter.

Tuesday, November 17, join Karryn Olson and me for a free workshop on Discerning Permaculture Niches for Your Livelihood. Find out more and sign up today at thepermaculturepodcast.com/niches/

Finally, if you’d like to receive a USB drive with a copy of every episode from the first decade of the show, you can do so by donating $50 or more to the podcast. 

Until the next time, spend each day composting what you can, while taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Resources
BLH Farm
Bokashi at BLH Farm (Including Bokashi Starter Kits in their store)

Their question was, “Do you have an opinion on the recent debate between Joel Salatin and Chris Newman of Sylvanaqua farms concerning racism and land access?”

If you’d asked me even a few years ago if race was an issue with land access, I would have said no. The issue for me then wasn’t race, but socioeconomic or class divide. Most of us were just too poor to buy any appreciable amount of land as wealth gets concentrated into the hands of developers and speculators, who could buy up the large chunks for cash and sell back ever smaller parcels at even higher prices for people who wanted a suburban or rural homesite. I saw this time and time again in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, my home from 1996 - 2007, as I knew several people with family farms that were offered millions of dollars for land that was later turned into developments. This same pattern repeated itself when I relocated to Harrisurg, Pennsylvania, as the price per acre climbed to $100,000 or more. Now living outside of Washington, D.C. undeveloped land here goes for over $1,000,000 an acre, if you can find any for sale.

Even if you do find something less expensive, you are going to be a long way away from a market where you can sell your goods. Even here in Falls Church, Virginia, the farmer’s market is populated by some farmers who travel two-hours one-way for the pop-up Saturday market where customers are willing to pay $6 for a dozen organic eggs or for two portobello mushrooms, and $8 for a quart of yogurt. 

Through this lens of class and the concentration of wealth I came to read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg in 2018, which challenged my ideas about race and inter-generational wealth as it relates to class. Then the work of urban planner Jeff Speck, who I interviewed earlier this year, expressed concerns about the displacement (gentrification) which occurs with development that disproportionately impacts people of color. Jeff suggested The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, which added clarity to why this is the case. For generations in the United States—with roots in the enslavement of people, red-lining of properties to exclude Black people from government services, and Black exclusion laws in the origins of Oregon—people of color have had less access to property and land. When and where property was available, the land was marginal compared to what whites could purchase, and at an increased price compared to white mortgages. 

Because of those readings and by becoming aware of the systemic policies, both tacit and explicit, which existed and continue to exist within this society, I agree with Chris’s perspective that agriculture in America has been guided by racist processes. Land, wealth, and the ability to grow food have been excluded to BIPOC (black and indigenous people of color) folks for generations. Whereas white farmers can regularly inherit their family farms across generations—and Joel Salatin is clear he inherited his farm from his family—Black, and indigenous farmers rarely have this possibility and instead, like Chris Newman, must exist on rented land. 

But, those are just my thoughts on Race and Land Access in America. If you have an opinion, leave a comment or get in touch by sending me an email: The Permaculture Podcast.

Until the next time, spend each day exploring how to decolonize permaculture, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.